care.data on the horizon?
Timothy Kelsey will be riding into town in January, just in time to "monetise" the whole database!
172 publicly visible posts • joined 6 Jun 2007
From the VFEmail site in Holland comes:
!!!ALERT!!!!
www.vfemail.net and mail.vfemail.net are currently unavailable. Our provider, TSRSolutions, has turned off our IP Address space due to an extortion DDOS attack from Armada Collective.
Incoming email is also not available. I do not have any additional updates at this time.
Mail may be restored for a short time by Sunday.
Of course if we are happy with the way things were, then there would be no campaign to keep them that way unless people do idiot things in the name of (faux) progress.
Is this a news site? Or a showcase for a graphic arts developer?
Let's just stick to the news. Let's just have reliable, factual, current information. Let's leave the artistic fads to others.
Ah, getting close!
But there was a private scheme (Central Railways Ltd) to provide such a link specifically enhancing freight capacity and removing it from the passenger railway. I seem to remember it being roundly condemned by all, especially the government, and it sank without trace. Now what is being proposed is a higher cost, more intrusive scheme that will not address the real transport needs. Just as good as any other Government sponsored scheme then!
I would venture to suggest that the EU bit is to insist that any new railways built in Britain are to their TGV standards, and therefore incompatible with the vast majority of the British railway system. Nothing new here either!
When are we going to get the proportionate investigations of the Mail and Trinity Mirror?
According to the ICO report (see Guido for a link), the Mail group are many times more prolific at this hacking lark, and Trinity Mirror beat the total of Mail and News International offences into a cocked hat! But the purpose of this Grauniad and BBC inspired attack is to destroy the Murdoch organisation. So there will be no investigation beyond the Murdoch organisation.
Please can we have an "Uncle Joe Stalin" icon?
It seems they are moving every system across to the Lloyds equivalent. In branch procedures recently changed as well. My guess about the length of down time for the web site is that it is to ensure everyone has forgotten what went before, so that when the "new" (ie rebadged Lloyds) offering is "unveiled" everyone will acclaim it.
The greed of the managers who destroyed the rather successful Halifax Building Society should be recorded in the annals of British financial mismanagement.
It would be good news if ACPO Ltd had a track record of doing what they have been told. For example the Home Secretary has instructed an end to the target culture within the police. To the Plod on the ground, there appears to have been no discernible change.
Put that beer back on ice, and don't hold your breath.
(Please can we have a "blue in the face" icon?)
Let us also not forget that it was a radio amateur (Phil Karn, KA9Q) who made networking a practical proposition for the masses. He wrote only the second implementation of TCP/IP. His own web site tells the story at:
http://www.ka9q.net/code/ka9qnos/
and notes that it has now served its day.
But elsewhere radio amateurs are still making progress in many forms of electronic communication.
G1TRL
but in this case I will make an exception.
Fastmail provides an excellent service, run by people who want to provide an email service. The moment Opera changes it into part of their wider "offering" it will have started the downhill trend.
Those who are thinking of migrating away might want to consider Virus Free Email at https://www.vfemail.net/ They have a similar charging structure. Again, not part of the "big business" of the internet.
The quick route that M$ pushed this through the ISO was on the basis of OOXML already being a "de-facto" standard widely in use.
Mot only should M$ get shafted for trying this on, the ISO should also suffer for having let M$ abuse their due process so severely.
Time to get the re-votes that were ridden over roughshod by committee "rules".
I am a one-man business at present. I thought about taking someone else on about a year ago, as there seemed to be plenty of work to support two. But then I started to look at the legislation and obligations that surrounded that move.
It was more profitable to turn away good business.
Early in the development of Firefox 3, they announced that they would be selling their users' browsing habits to Giggle (who fund much of Mozilla anyway), in much the same way as if you had installed a Giggle Toolbar. Never did hear if they had backed away from that, so never bothered to change to version 3. Actually 2.0.0.20 works very nicely thank you! I just hope all the exploits are aimed at the new glitzy features that only exist in version 3.
Don't worry too much about the election, it won't make blind bit of difference on two counts:
1. There really isn't any difference between NuLabour and BluLabour. After all, Cameron is the "heir to Blair", and the rot really got underway on Blair's shift.
2. Our government is no longer in Westminster, but in Brussels where they merely pull the strings of the pseuds in Westmonster. Since they signed the Lisbon Constitution Treaty, our Prime Minister has been required by EU law to do what is he told by Brussels. The only question that he is permitted to ask when our national government in Brussels has said "Jump!" is "How high, sir?"
As for your question, YES. "Selected for special treatment" springs to mind.
Am I being far too cynical? Or is this Ofcom (aware of the Tory intentions on its long term non-survival) trying to get its defence in first.
They know that by the time our Dear Leader finally agrees to an election, there will just be a few moths in the public purse. So if Ofcom can demonstrate that they are a net revenue raising Quango, then surely the Tories will leave them alone as they will need every penny that Ofcom can raise for them (amongst all else needed to undo the damage).
The grenade is for the Ofcom offices.
In previous years he would have been part of the research team that proved flight was impossible for the Bumble Bee. Its a good job that Bumble Bees never read research papers. I doubt angels do either, unless its to have a good giraffe at the pomposity of the fool. Good bit of self publicity though!
Have a beer to celebrate!
Before the Panda cars were the Velocette water cooled "motor bikes" with windshields as tall as the Bobby and his uniform helmet. And VHF radios meant that they didn't need the blue police boxes for the patrolling officer to ring back to the station to confirm that he had nothing to report.
By the looks of it, they are still pushing what is basically a petrol engined car with a bit of additional electric stored power to look green. And at double the price of a vehicle without all the added complexity. And they don't hit their advertised mpg figures, at least mine never has. I'll never buy another.
Instead look for the Volvo Recharge. Much more sensibly, they have started from an electric car, and are bolting a generator to it. Much more efficient, much less complicated.
AC @20:04, you can't have been reading the emails etc, can you? If you still believe (in AGW) after the release of all the proof that the Climate Change lot have been making up their data to fit their theory (and its not just the CRU at UEA, but the Australians and the Kiwis have been caught out fudging their data too); if you still believe, then you are joining up the wrong set of dots.
Let us not forget that while the NPIA might be "linked to the Home Office", it is in fact a wholly owned subsidiary of ACPO Ltd. ACPO Ltd claims to be in "EQUAL partnership with government" (see www.acpo.police.uk), so the link to the Home Office is rather tenuous at best. ACPO Ltd is a company limited by guarantee, set up that way in order to evade the Freedom of Information Act (see the reasons why they refuse FoI requests unless it suits them, on their web site).
In 2006, I flew on an A340 of Air New Zealand from Auckland to Hong Kong. We were delayed by about an hour and a half at take off, with the aircraft loaded. Then they told us that it was the loos that were the problem. Throughout the whole of the 12 hour flight, the port side (left side if facing front) loos were completely out of action, and the starboard loos were out of action for about 50% of the time. Never have I been so glad to get off a flight. Fortunately the onward connection via Cathay Pacific to London was a Boeing! Everything worked well.
For my sins, I drive a Toyota Prius. I am right fed up (insert other words of emphasis to choice!) with its appalling mpg compared with all sorts of cars of similar size, but without the added weight burden of electric motor and battery. The reason for Toyota's errors is that they got the basic design principle wrong. The Prius is a petrol car with a bolt on extra electric power pack.
This Suzuki machine, like the Volvo Recharge project car, is an electric vehicle with a bolt on generator. I suspect that the design will be much simpler without the CVT gearbox and other stuff necessary for a mechanical transmission. When they get the motors into the wheel hubs (as Volvo were doing last time I looked) they can do without mechanical brakes and rely instead on regenerative/resistive loads. Fewer mechanical bits to go wrong, easier car to look after.
Popped into my local branch the other day to shelter from the rain. What I saw was significantly reduced amount of shelving, and large areas of bare floor. Plentiful bargain offers, in some cases only a little more expensive than reputable traders on the interwebs. I asked the cashier when the store was due to close. She couldn't tell me, having just started that morning!
Just have a look at American Science and Engineering Inc's Z-Backscatter technology, and the other devices they have. No need for carefully calibrated transmitters.
http://www.as-e.com/products_solutions/zbv.asp
Have a browse around while you are there. The see through your clothes scanner has been "privacy enhanced" since they first developed it. Originally the image on the web site showed all the wrinkles and creases under the subject's clothes! I'd expect that it still will to those with "a need to know".
I'm afraid that I read Poppy's comment to indicate that the Home Office knew their policy was a bit light on fact when they launched it first, so they invented/reinforced the Poppy Institute to give it a cloak of respectability before the Bill got to its Third Reading!
Of course, I could be cynical.